With the deadline for eligible Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to get their renewal paperwork in to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) now just hours away, one of the states that stands to get hurt the most by Donald Trump ending the program is Texas, which is home to 120,000 of the nation’s 800,000 DACA recipients.
As the Dallas Morning News noted, Texas could lose up to $6.1 billion if DACA recipients are no longer able to work legally. Immigrant youth make tax contributions and that’s important to acknowledge, but it’s about more than just money—it’s about real lives. The Texas Tribune highlights the stories of five undocumented immigrant youth who stand to have their lives upended if Congress does not act on the bipartisan DREAM Act, including 18-year-old Uzair:
”A lot of people say we need to go back to our country. But this is really the only country we know. I don’t remember anything about Pakistan. My parents immigrated here with me when I was five months old. So I’ve lived in Houston, Texas, for practically my whole life. My family has never had the opportunity to travel or go on vacation or anything like that, just because of that lingering fear that we had.
“You know, in one second we could be enjoying life,” he says, “and the next second we could be deported or our family could be separated.”
Uzair’s younger siblings are among the estimated 6 million U.S. citizen children who have at least one undocumented parent, with their citizenship not providing stability they deserve. Research shows “children who have been separated from their parents frequently show signs of trauma, including anxiety, depression, frequent crying, disrupted eating and sleeping, and difficulties in school.”
And because of his legal status, Uzair has been unable to access the same care as his younger siblings, despite knowing no other country but this one as his own and despite getting sick just like anyone else:
We are a mixed-status household, my parents, they are both undocumented. I am the first to have DACA, and my three siblings, they are all U.S. citizens. They had better opportunities. If they were sick or if they needed to go to the dentist or anything like that, they really had easy access because the government would support them. We lived in a really low-income household, so for them those benefits were really provided. But for me, our parents would always have to put in every dollar they had just so I could go see the doctor.
Let that put to rest the unfounded misconception that undocumented immigrants get anything they want for free. Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for federal assistance, and if you’re looking for who exactly is living sky-high on the public dole, better to start here than undocumented immigrant youth and their families.
The fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of Uzairs all over the country, and they all stand to be affected by Trump’s action and the GOP’s inaction. The Texas Tribune highlights four others’ stories here. Listen to them, and when you’re done, pick up the phone to call your member of Congress and demand a clean vote on the bipartisan DREAM Act.
“If I lose DACA, I’m not just going to lose a paper,” said 27-year-old Neiva, another DACA recipient interviewed by the paper. “I’m going to lose my job, I’m going to lose my dreams, I’m going to lose everything.” And that’s no exaggeration.